Pages

Friday, February 20, 2015

I discovered a cool new photo app...Heirloom. The name alone should appeal to genealogists!
What makes Heirloom different than the other billion photo apps out there already? The ability to digitize your physical photos using just your smart phone camera. Did you get that? Scanning with out a scanner. It will even crop the edges, correct any wonky perspective and do a little color correction. Automatically. Then it uploads the full resolution images to your own little piece of the Cloud where you can share them in a private social network. Seems to me this would be great for quickly getting through a lot of photos. There is no limit on the number of photos you can save to Heirloom's servers and the app its self is free. But all this being said, I would still want to actually scan my real heirloom photos for long term storage. I don't know the resolution or format Heirloom uses but I doubt its a 600dpi tiff file like I used for my husband's antique photo album. But for regular, daily life photos it looks like a great solution. Its available in both the iTunes app store and Google Play store.

Here's their promo video. And for what its worth....he had me at "Star Wars".

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Conventional wisdom long ago determined that the Baby Boomer generation spans the years from 1946 to 1964. I was born in 1956. By that standard, I am smack dab in the middle of the Boomers. But really, what does someone born in 1946 have in common with someone born 18 years later in 1964? I'll tell you....very little.

Here are the top reasons why I, and the rest of the back half of the Boomers (born 1955-1964), are not really Baby Boomers at all:

1. Our parents- My parents were too young to be active participants in WWII. The true boomers were the result of several years of marriage and child-bearing being postponed due to that war. My parents were children during WWII. For them, there was no postponement. They married and had families in the time span that was appropriate for their generation.

2. JFK - His assassination, and those of his brother Robert and Martin Luther
King, Jr., were formative and defining moments for Boomers. I was 6 years
old when Kennedy died. I barely remember it and my younger siblings
don't remember it at all.

3. Rock- Most of us weren't even listening to rock when the
Beatles broke up. Joplin, Hendrix and Woodstock may have been the
Boomer's musical influences but ours were Elton John, Fleetwood Mac and
The Eagles. I personally had a thing for John Denver but maybe that was
just me.

4. Vietnam- Boomers fought in or protested the Vietnam War. No one I knew in high school participated. By the time we were old enough both the draft and the war were over.

5. Politics- For all the Boomer's faults, they really did believe they could change
the world. When the true boomers went to college and started flexing their new political muscles, college campuses exploded. My generation was in middle and elementary school watching from afar and wondering what all the fuss was about. Which leads to the next reason; Watergate

6. Watergate- We came of age in a post-Watergate world. In fact, Nixon resigned the presidency the same month I left for college. We were and are much less confident in our power to change much of anything and our subsequent experiences since then have only reinforced that view.

7. It's the Economy, Stupid- The other "boom" following WWII was the economic one. The Boomer parents were the main beneficiary of that particular boom but their children inherited it. Yes, their large numbers made the competition for jobs and opportunities intense. But by the time my generation came along the economy was tougher (18% interest and up for a home loan!) plus the older Boomers had gotten there first, were already established in careers and the pickings were slim. Not complaining, just saying.

Now, I'm sure my "Generation Y" and "Millennial" kids are shaking their heads as they read this. I'm sure they see little distinction between Boomers and my "as-yet-unnamed" generation. We probably all just look old to them. And while the Boomers and those of us who came immediately after them may have breathed the same cultural "air" we were molded by very different times. To lump us together is at best inaccurate. So stop!

Friday, March 21, 2014

This week our family welcomed the newest leaf to the family tree.. Graham Wilks Armstrong! He was born Tuesday, March 19, 7 lbs 8 oz, 20 inches long. His mommy and daddy are my son and daughter-in-love Robert and Amy Armstrong. He has an older brother Tate who is 2.

Tate was a tad more interested in the iPad.

Oh well, as Tate's Uncle Andrew once said about his daddy, "When he's old enough to play with me, then he'll be my brother".